I’m running a pre-bought campaign in a sci-fi setting
Totally not-shady NPC: I’ll need you to retrieve my secret cargo from the abandoned spaceship, but it’s very private, so don’t look inside–
Player: Is it a girl in a box?
NPC: …What?
Player: This is a sci-fi story, and there’s a box you don’t want us to look into. There’s only ever one way that ends, and it’s always with a girl stuffed into a box.
Other Player: Hey, we don’t even know how big it is. It could just be a cigar box.
First Player: Okay, you’re right. It could be a bunch of sex toys. How big is the box?
NPC: It’s… uh… six feet long by three feet wide by three feet deep…
First Player:Ugh. Okay, fine. Somebody pack a crowbar and a spare set of women’s clothing. We need to go get this girl out of her box.
uhhhhhhh…….
One day I’m going to run a sci-fi campaign of some kind and there will inevitably be a girl-sized box that the players are not allowed to open
And when they open it instead of a girl there will be 12 possums that immediately escape and create possum-related mischief until they can be put back in the box.
Number the possums 2-13, no one’s going to be counting when a bunch of possums bust out of a box.
You know that whole trope where like, the protagonists get teleported up into the aliens’ spaceship or base or whatever and the alien appears to them only it doesn’t appear as it really looks like but rather, since it doesn’t want to scare the protagonists, it takes the form of something we find familiar and pleasing and is like, “I look like your dad or whatever–is this form okay?” Like I think about that trope a lot and I think like, what if the alien couldn’t pick out a form via telepathy and only had earth media to try and decide what form would scare its human guests least and be accepted almost immediately and honestly the more I think about it the more options for what form that might be are just really fun to me.
“I have chosen the form of your earth playwright and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda–do not be afraid. I come in peace.”
“Greetings. I am Glofnorbo of the cloud you call the ‘Pegasus Nebula.’ I have scanned your earth media from afar and empirically decided that you would find the form of the one known as Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson most pleasing. I have come to confer with your leaders.”
“Do not be panic. I come in peace. I have assumed the form of your insectoid demigoddess ‘Hatsune Miku’ so that we may communicate peacefully without my true form horrifying you.”
“It was decided that I would assume the form of your ‘Mister Rogers’ in order to best welcome your world to the galactic neighborhood without frightening your kind.”
“…So did your colleague take on the form of Jack Black for that reason too?”
“No, that is the actual Jack Black. We do not know how to make him leave.”
imagine they take the form via telepethy but your mind projects media the strongest so they turn out lookin like what your HC for fictional characters is
my generation of people who were children throughout the harry potter series as it was being published grew up into roughly 4 categories:
category A: 20+ year old who now hates the series
category B: 20+ year old who lost interest and now realizes the series isnt as great as they thought, but still has a lot of nostalgia for it
category C: 20+ year old with a lot of nostalgia and still loves it and produces content, but is fairly chill
category D: 20+ year old whos fucking ride or die for it, probably an asshole, makes very bad 2012-esque posts constantly and thinks hogwarts houses are serious business, no life outside of harry potter, snape apologist
